Program Overview - Center for the Advancement of Hispanic Health Disparities Research. The purpose of the Center for the Advancement of Hispanic Health Disparities Research is to participate in and provide leadership to research-based innovations that will reduce Hispanic health disparities. The Center will focus on Hispanic health disparities. The mission of the Center is threefold. The Center will develop collaborative relationships between the University of Texas at El Paso, College of Health Sciences and the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston, School of Public Health that will foster sustainable mechanisms for scholarship development in Hispanic health disparities. The Center will mentor health researchers through learning institutes, guided research studies, and dissemination of new knowledge. These mentored health researchers will begin the development of knowledge base of innovation in Hispanic health research. The mission of the Center will be guided by a conceptual framework that makes explicit the variables of interest that influence Hispanic health disparities and the mechanisms the Center will use to impact the ultimate outcome of reducing Hispanic health disparities. The Center will act as a catalyst for research on the variables affecting health disparities. The mechanisms include the recruitment, selection and mentoring of faculty using the expert knowledge of the Advisory Committee and senior faculty of both institutions. The Center will assemble together a set of pilot studies each year of the grant that advance the knowledge about Hispanic health disparities and knowledge about the best practices to eliminate health disparities in Hispanics. The Center will channel the knowledge discovered via its mentoring and dissemination core. The variables of interest to the Center are clustered into five dimensions. Determinations of Health, Effects on Population Health Resulting from Health Disparities, Health Care Needs Resulting from Health Disparities, Policy and System Supports for Elimination of Health Disparities, and Health Status Data, Trends in Disparities, and Best Approaches.